Week one for the boys is in the books!

Cary and Dean finished up their first week at their new school, with nary a complaint to register.

No tears, no mishaps, no nothin'...It's amazing.

Here they are when I picked them up on their first day. See something missing on Cary? Yes. My child broke his glasses. Again. But look how happy he is. Dean was happy too. But he was too busy asking me if we were going to the playground to be bothered to smile.

We also had two-plus days of the new sitter, Miss Arlene. And although Clair is still not really feeling her AT ALL, when I get home from work, she is usually happily ignoring the sitter and playing boisterously with her brothers. As long as she isn't sitting in a corner sobbing or shaking in fear, it is all good with me.

I did come home early the first day of her working and was surprised that no one was there. I called through the house, peeked out the back door, checked upstairs. No kids. No Arlene. Her car was outside and her purse was in the living room. She must be here, I thought. The last place I had left to check was the basement. I put my hand on the door knob to go down there and in a split second, my brain conjured up an image of my children with their throats slit and Miss Arlene dead.

That is how crazy I am, y'all. I just knew this new babysitter had murdered my children and committed suicide. My heart was beating out of my chest. I was freaking out.
When I finally gathered the courage (and the common sense: "Get it together, Tanika!") of course, she wasn't downstairs. And neither were my murdered children.

In fact, she had just taken my very happy and safe children for a walk, because Dean had written a "letter" - literally, he wrote the letter "D" on a piece of paper, folded it up and put it in an envelope - to no one in particular and wanted to mail it. So Arlene drew a stamp on his little envelope and walked with them in search of a mailbox. She didn't kill them. She was actually being VERY sweet to them.

I felt like a heel. And a nut.

But I'll get better. We'll all get better. We're all getting adjusted to the new, much more hectic schedule, and by the end of the day every single one of us is pooped. The kids crash at bedtime like they were working in the salt mines all day. Last night I was asleep by 8:50 p.m. 

But I can tell things are going to get easier. Today, Clair still clung to me for far too long, but didn't cry at all when I dropped her off. In fact, when her teacher took her hand, she simply said in a small voice, "Bye, Mommy," and I closed the pre-K 2 door, and walked away.

Of course, I felt a mixture of pride and happiness and sadness.

Our babies are in school. All three of them. They leave us in the morning and we don't see them again all day long. They are learning things that we don't teach them. They are experiencing things that have absolutely nothing to do with us. In fact, most of the things that happen in their day, we won't even know they've seen or heard or done or felt.

This is the natural course of life, I know. And it is good. And sad. And crazy.
And normal.

Clair's (sorta) first day of school!

Today was Clair's first day in the 2s class!

It's so nice only having to convince one child to look at the camera!

I call it her sorta first day, because it was only an hour and a half long, and we were there with her the whole time. *Tomorrow* is the real first day, when she has to stay from 8 to 11:30 -- alone. And then Thursday, she has to stay the FULL day -- until 2:30 p.m., which means she even has to nap there. Yikes.

Poor baby girl. Next week, when the boys start school, her world will be rocked even more, because she will not only have to stay for the full day, but she will also be picked up by a new caregiver, because this is Michelle's last week with us. I'm too sad to talk about that right now - really, it's too much.

So let's focus on Clair's (sorta) first day!

First of all, for one small child, we sure had to bring a lot of stuff.

The class did a gradual entry today, so only nine of the 16 kids in the class were there this morning. Guess how many of the nine Clair played with? If you guessed "not a one," you are correct!

She stuck close to us, not even venturing off to explore all the exciting toys unless one of us was near.

Making breakfast for Daddy.

Mommy's big going-to-school girl!

 She enjoyed decorating her name-tag and putting stickers all over it.

She didn't cry at all, thank goodness, though there was some whininess. But for the most part, I would say she was generally unimpressed with the whole thing.

Unimpressed is better than freaked the funk out, so I'll take it.

Because tomorrow, my friends, is another day altogether.
Pray for us.

Switching schools

OK folks, so it has now been two full weeks since my last post. That is the longest I have gone without blogging since I began this venture (other than when I was newly home from the hospital with Clair and not sure what time of day it was or if I was going to throw myself off the roof of my house.)

I'm leaving for Portland, Maine tonight with my two big bosses for client meetings, so I am really just waiting to head to the airport, which means I have a few minutes of "down" time and can actually blog! Now is as good a time as any, I suppose, to get out the post I've been trying to write about why we're switching the boys to a new school.

There are soooo many reasons, the two biggest ones being: Our family experiences, and racism in America.

 I'll just start with one reason here -- our family experiences -- and get to racism -- a huge and hairy post - another time.

Here goes.

Lester and I are both fans of and products of public schools. I covered public schools as an education reporter for years. My mother and sister are public school employees. I sit on the board of a public charter school. But in Baltimore, the public schools are CRAP. Crap with a capital horrible. There are a few schools that are OK, but you have to live in those zoned areas to go to them. And as you can tell from my many rantings about how much I want to get out of our neighborhood, we don't live in those zones. The charters are another option, but there's a lottery, so no guarantee, and also most are still fairly newish. So their track records are still gelling. Our options, then, are to move or go private.

Moving would make the most sense, honestly. We'd get out of our neighborhood into a better one, with a yard and neighbors our kids could grow up with. And, ostensibly, the schools in the neighborhood we moved to would be much better. But we're in no position to move right now, because of the darn housing market crash. Our house is a million thousand dollars under water. We couldn't sell this house without taking a huge loss. We don't expect that to change anytime soon, so when we do move, we'll be renting, I think. That's another story altogether.

But the biggest reason we chose private has to do with our family situations. Lester and I both come from families where we have witnessed firsthand the damage that can be done when kids are sucked into a peer group that is going nowhere fast. Of my four siblings, only one went to college. The others, to put it bluntly, are drains on my parents, even though all are adults with children of their own. With two educated, loving, present parents in their lives -- they still fell victim to the mediocre public school education in our going-downhill neighborhood. They were more concerned about being "cool" than preparing for the future. Our parents were (and are still) wonderful, but they have no network. So when the time came for my siblings to outgrow their immaturity and make up for lost time, their windows had closed and my parents had no friends in solid places to help them. I believe my parents will go to their graves taking care of my grown siblings. And my siblings' kids will repeat this cycle. It is a hard, hard thing to say this. I love my siblings dearly. I would do almost anything for them, and their kids especially. But the truth is, bad neighborhood + mediocre education equals not much of a life for any of them. (Aside from my baby sister, who is doing quite well.)

I don't want that for my kids.

In Lester's case, his family has even fewer examples of "success." But the one who stands out most is his cousin Joshua, who was like a brother to him. I remember how proud Lester was the day we dropped Joshua off at college in West Virginia (notice it was me and Lester), after spending hours and hundreds buying him a foot locker, a refrigerator, shower shoes and tons of packs of Ramen noodles.

Lester thought Joshua had beat the odds. With Lester's love and attention and sacrifice, Joshua had made it to college. But the pull of the old neighborhood -- and his old friends -- was too much for Joshua. Over a break in his freshman year, while hanging out in a city basketball park, Joshua was shot in the back of the head and died.

The neighborhood and the peer group were, quite literally, the death of that promising young man.

We have not really gotten over it. We likely never will.

Lester and I are not naive enough to believe that we can protect our children from making bad choices or being attracted to the wrong people. And we're certainly not naive enough to believe that private schools aren't FULL of some of the "wrong" people. But we hope that we can try to make a difference somehow by sending them to this very sweet Quaker school -- with its emphasis on peace, and community.

We hope we can protect them even just a little bit more than we could if we sent them to the city's public schools.

There's more -- but I have to run! Gotta go to the airport!

Bringing my blog back up-to-date

The last few weeks have been so jam-packed, I haven't had time to properly blog. My goal is to get something down at least five times a week, but that is like a pipe dream, even on the best weeks.

So lots of stuff gets unrecorded, and lots of thoughts get unsaid. But there's nothing to do but to jump right back into it. So here goes.

I'll start with a hodge-podge of things that happened over the course of the last couple weeks or so.

You already saw the kids in their adorable Halloween costumes, but you didn't get to see MOI.

I'm the Queen Bee, y'all. Bzzzz.

Momma Bee went to the boys' school for their Halloween party. While there, I had to be the "kid" and the boys were the teachers. "Sit down, Mommy!" they said. "Criss-cross applesauce!"

Here they are showing me what day of the week it is. I also learned what the weather was. And, if I was very good, I could possibly have gotten to be the line-leader or the door-holder. But I don't remember earning any of those things. I must not have been very good.

Last week, Lester got invited to go to "Thank the elected officials night" at The National Aquarium, even though he's not an elected official. But his boss is, and so we joined him there for a nighttime reception, dolphin show and free rein of the awesome Baltimore aquarium. (If you haven't been, it's really quite nice.)

There were lots of questions about where dolphins go poop (and lots of "ewwwing") and lots of emphatic declarations that jellyfish DO give us jelly, Mommy. "That's why they're called JELLYfish!" Duh.

My favorite is the boysenberry jellyfish. Peach is pretty tasty too.

We got to take home this snapshot of us holding Photoshopped puffins. Cary, who was in no mood to participate with the photographer's requests, was heartbroken when he realized that his pouty refusals to hold his hands out meant he didn't get to 'hold' a puffin when the picture came out. Oh well. Life lesson, Cary. It'll learn ya.

In other news, I'm happy to say, after an October of jam-packed Sundays, we went to the church we like two weekends in a row and pretty much decided we want to join. But first we're going to attend a newcomer's reception this Sunday and ask a few more questions, just to be sure.

I'm excited about possibly joining a church again. But I will be even more glad when Lester and I can both sit in the sanctuary and hear the message together, as opposed to what usually happens: One of us ends up in the lobby with Clair, who refuses to sit still during the lesson and screams bloody murder when we try to leave her in the (very sweet and cute) little nursery. Ugh.

For now, I'll just be happy that we're getting our butts up and getting ourselves to church again. Baby steps, right?

After church last weekend, we ended up going grocery shopping as a family, which we rarely do because hello -- three kids? Wegman's is near the church, so we went there, which was a total blessing! The kids were starving after church, so I took them through the prepared foods section of the grocery store and bought lunch, which we ate upstairs while Lester took the list and shopped.

When the kids were done eating, we just went over and played in the grocery store's children's area until Lester got the car loaded and came back to get us. Easy peasy.

Seriously, whoever came up with the brilliant idea to have a children's area near a dining area, near a bank of bathrooms, upstairs from a huge supermarket -- that person is a bonafide, A No. 1 genius.

We can't afford to shop at Wegman's all the time -- especially when you factor in having to feed the lot of us while we're there, instead of eating lunch at home. But when we have to do it, I'm grateful that we have it as an option. (Also, I made the easiest delicious butternut squash for dinner, thanks to Wegman's handy-dandy "buy a vegetable, we'll dice it for you" service. I love Wegman's!)

And lastly, I have to say how excited I was when Cary came padding into our room yesterday morning (a half-hour before it was time to wake-up, but I'll forgive him) and said, "Look, Mommy." Then, slowly, pointing to each word with his little finger:  'A. Is. For.'"

He read that!

Then he pointed to the alligator and said "Alligator. A. Is For. ALLIGATOR!"

Best 6:15 wake-up call I ever had.

Tomorrow is the end of the soccer season -- there's a parents vs. kids soccer game and a pizza party! Cary and Dean are beside themselves with excitement.

Happy weekend everybody!

I'm still here! Still swamped, but still here!

Hellllllloooooooo!
Do you still remember me?

I so miss blogging, guys. I can't wait for this week to be over, which *should* mean a little downtime at work, at least during my lunch or something, to reflect on life with my kiddos and husband and the world at large.

But for the last few weeks, my work life has been jam-packed! Even when I get home at night, after the kids go to bed, I have been up till 11:30/midnight working. Total suckage.

So much stuff has happened that I'm sure I'll never remember to get down. I never did get to my post about liking my kids (there was a point I wanted to make) and I haven't even had an opportunity to share post-Halloween photos. Blah.

But I had 5 minutes this morning before a call and I wanted to share this photo of the boys, which we snapped last weekend, when we pulled up in front of our house after a lovely afternoon spent at our friend Stacey's house, turned to look in the backseat and found:

Isn't that the sweetest thing? They were just staring up at the DVD player, holding hands, peaceful, blissful and beautiful. I swear one of the sweetest things about being a parent is getting to witness that kind of love.

So imagine how torn I am today, one day after getting a message from the kids' school that Dean had been in an "incident" on the playground. I won't get into it here; it's silly, if you ask me and completely overblown. But suffice it to say, my peaceful, sweet boy Dean -- the one who runs to Clair if she falls and sings to her -- had quite a day yesterday. He was really upset about it most of the evening, and he needed lots of love and attention. I felt so bad for him.

I totally understand that schools need to be safe places for kids, and that staff needs to correct children when they do things they shouldn't. But I just wonder what we've come to that adults think 3-year-olds are supposed to behave like 10-year-olds -- never get frustrated or angry, never have emotions, never act out.

We teach our boys to be peaceful and kind. And you can tell from that photo that they *get* that.

So, I'm OK. Dean's OK. Everything is ... OK.

I need a second job!

One thing I was not prepared for when the boys started school was the sheer volume of things we would be asked to sell, purchase, pay for, fund, raise money for etc.

Since Cary and Dean started pre-school, we have already had to bug our friends at work to buy cakes, cookies and pizza for a fundraiser. We've gotten a coupon book the school wanted us to buy (we didn't). The boys got sent home with 25 tickets to a turkey dinner that we are required to sell (which means we're just sending in a check for $25, because I'm not selling turkey dinner tickets). And we have to send in diapers and wipes every month -- a huge box to share.  That one I get, because the boys are still in diapers, but added to everything else, it all starts to get a little overwhelming.

At least twice a week, we get notes from the school like this:

• Please help the school's Certificate Program!  We need to sell $150.00 in AMC Theaters and/or Applebees to receive an additional $7.75 discount!  That may not seem like a lot, but it adds up! 
• The preschool classes will be riding their bikes for the annual Trike-a-thon to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.   Please make your donations payable to "St. Jude  Children's Research Hospital."
• Longaberger Basket Bingo - Location:  Church Hall  Cost:  $15 in advance and $20 at the door.  Food and baked goods will be on sale starting at 6 P.M.  Bingo will start at 7 P.M.  Plan to join us for this fun fundraiser that will benefit the church and the school.

And there are countless other things -- I've lost count, truly, and it's only October. I don't mind helping the school, but good grief! My head is spinning with all the requests for money!

The latest thing is a fall festival next week, where the school will have the kids make scarecrows. I assumed from the flyers they've sent home that the scarecrow part of the festival was optional, but I was told yesterday that no, we are required to buy the materials for Cary and Dean to make scarecrows.

Please keep in mind I just bought the boys a whole complement of fall things, like fleeces, hoodies and these super-cute puffer vests:

So I was none too pleased about being told I now have to buy two sets of overalls, two shirts, two sets of pantyhose, and two hats. I have two boys after all. They both will want to make scarecrows!

Their teacher said, "Oh, just go to the thrift store." But the last time I checked, the thrift store still requires actual money in exchange for their goods!

Ugh!

I know I'm being a little huffy about this, and I know it's all for a good cause. I want the school and all the kids -- not just mine -- to have the things they need to be successful. But I honestly (naively) thought that the tuition plus materials fees we paid before school started was the extent of  the cash we'd be "required" to shell out.

I suppose the boys going to school is as much an education for me as it is for them.

Adorable Little Monsters

Getting the boys ready for school has really been a lot of fun.

I finally found lunch bags to replace the backpacks that the school says they can't use.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I'm hungry!!!!

They're not as adorable as the animal backpacks, but somehow the motif -- funny little monsters -- works quite well where Cary and Dean are concerned.

Also, they are easy to open, easy to wipe clean, they fit their thermoses and two snacks, plus an ice pack. AND, they were $8.  To that I say, SCORE!

I also had to decorate the boys' leave-behind bins, which are intended to hold two sets of change of clothes. I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so instead of trying to really decorate them, I decided just to find things that represent who the boys are and what things they like.

So Dean's has a picture of a cookie and popcorn and fruit (he loves snacks!), trucks, blocks, a lawnmower, the beach and Cookie Monster, among other things. And Cary's has a picture of books, trucks, a lawnmower and Elmo, among other things.

I had a lot of fun sitting at my dining room table, clipping things and sticking them on the bins, attempting (as best I could) to make them look halfway decent.

 It's mostly just stickers and clip art and glue, but there's a lot of love stuck on these here bins.
<3

Question for the Mommies: I have purchased reusable snack bags, Tupperware with built-in ice packs (for yogurt and cottage cheese and stuff) and thermoses, so that the boys are creating as little trash as possible at snacktime. But I honestly don't see how I get around buying plastic spoons.
I can totally envision washable spoons getting tossed away or left behind, and I have absolutely no desire to buy a million "real" spoons. I think I'm going to just buy a huge party pack of plain plastic spoons. Does anyone have a better idea?

Forward, backward, staying in place

Clair: Moving forward

Clair can just about sit up on her own! This is a huge milestone that I remember from the boys' infancy. It is so very freeing when you don't have to prop a baby, or bring along some sort of sitting apparatus when traveling. And she looks like such a big girl, sitting up all straight-backed (for a few minutes at a time), playing with a toy and checking out the scenery.

And this morning, lying in my bed, playing with her feet, she started full-on babbling: DA-da! DAAA-da! Da-da-da-da-daaaa!

She sounds exactly like a fictional baby character in a Pixar movie. It's so adorable, I can't. even. deal.

Dean: Slightly stuck

Dean had a really bad evening yesterday -- very much like the ones I'd thought were somewhat behind us -- and of course, it was a night when Lester had a meeting. He was so over-the-top, all exposed nerves and tears and irrationality -- that I ended up putting both boys to bed at 7:25, no bath, no story, no fanfare. Just Good-night. Close the door. Heavy sigh.

It was all I could manage.

He's also started a bit of a stutter, getting stuck on the first words he's trying to say, especially when those words are "Cary," and "Baby Clair," for some reason. It often sounds something like: "Tarry-tarry-tarry-t-t-t-t-tarry-tarry (pause) Tarry took the Legos away!" I have read that we should ignore this, that his brain is just moving much faster than his mouth, but it worries Lester. Especially when paired with his stress-and-sleepiness-related eye-blinking, and his ball-of-nerves emotions. But, surprisingly, I (for once) am inclined not to worry. I think this is very normal for kids his age, so we'll try ignoring it and expecting it eventually  to go away.

Cary: Regressing

Cary, who can recognize all his letters, insisted today that a foam letter "L" was the letter "K." Like, arguing with me about it.

And this child who has known his colors for sooo long, very often lately, confuses red and yellow (who knows why.)

Michelle said, after two days of peeing in the potty, yesterday he flat out refused to sit on it (which made his shadow decide not to sit on it either.)

And this morning, Lester asked him if he wanted to go to school, and he said, without missing a beat, "mmm-MMM!" (Shaking his head no.)

Maybe it's just as well. It seems my two boys -- who demand to be on my lap more and more these days -- need a little more time at home. And that is alright with me.